The Ones You Love
by Silberias
Summary: Sherlock and Mycroft's mother wasn't cut out for being there for them, but luckily Sherlock's father was there. They weren't quite raised by James Bond to grow up into neat little James Bond Juniors, but near enough. Sherlock/Tinker Tailor crossover.
1. Chapter 1

This is my Frenchsmattering fic, a crossover between Sherlock and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It shall be on-going, I've got about 4,000 words written for it at the moment and will be writing more.

Enjoy!

* * *

Richard made him go to the christening, of course, even though the man himself stayed home to read the paper and simmer. They'd only just made up six months before, and things like babies didn't just disappear. Belinda had been wonderful in a stilted kind of way for a year and then she'd come to him to tell him she was tendering her resignation from the Service. She was taking her six year old, Mykie, and going to the country to have her baby. His baby, too, though initially they'd both agreed it was best he had limited contact. Especially after he'd faced his demons and gone back to Richard.

Belinda had said it was worth having her pension marked as "interrupted service," to have the child properly. Peter wasn't even rightly sure that the baby was his—a tiny head of dark curls which didn't match Belinda's golden hair or his own gingered blonde. Time would out, he decided. The infant was two weeks old when she'd come to London, and Richard had cooed despite himself over the boy while Mykie had stared at Peter in a less-than-vaguely betrayed manner.

At the time he hadn't the heart to tell the seven year old boy that his mother would never give him a permanent parent to look up to. He hadn't said anything other than a pleasant, if distant, greeting to the boy who not a year ago he was contemplating the task of being father to. If Richard hadn't agreed to take him back, Peter had been fully prepared to live like George Smiley—and let Belinda walk out on him when she pleased, leaving him to limp the rest of their lives along. It would be better for Mykie to have one constant in his life, he'd once bravely thought in Belinda's shower as he vigorously scrubbed himself of her scent, of her touch. He'd even brought his own soap for the very cause.

Because of the special circumstances of _Sherlock's_ birth, Peter spent a lot of time looking after the two boys. Belinda still wandered about, but with the anchor of Sherlock to Peter she could leave the two with him and Richard for a weekend. Or two. Or seven. Richard had an affinity for Sherlock, calling the infant _Sher_, while rocking him in his arms. Mykie looked on usually, standing just at Peter's elbow. A pudgy boy fortunate enough to not need glasses paired with a thin and forgettable face, and a hairline fracture of clinginess in his icy personality—Peter felt terrible that a _seven _year old was so closed off, but didn't know how to help, not really.

Richard was an apt parent for Sherlock, leaving Peter able to set straight to work on Mykie—_Mycroft_, because Belinda was some sort of psychotic and had given her children freakish names. Hadn't she thought that these two children would eventually have to face boarding school?

"Mykie, do you like Sher?"

The little boy shrugged, uncomfortable in the knitted sweater that Peter's mother had made for him—part of her last ditch attempts to "cure her boy from the queer," as she so lovingly put it. She wanted to play grandmother to Belinda's children, so occasionally they stuffed Mykie or Sher into her knitting projects and took pictures. His mother thought that having fathered a child meant that there was some sort of "hope" in Peter's "case."

He hated her.

"I suppose he's alright."

"Could you imagine doing _anything_ for him?"

Another shrug. Peter sighed and put a hand on the small shoulder, kneeling down in the same motion to see the world from the vantage point of a seven year old. It looked rather insurmountable from here, if he was honest. Belinda had long forgotten their agreement that they go their separate ways—Mykie was on the verge of beginning to call him 'Da' before he'd gone back to Richard, and then there was Sher—and the woman was quite content letting himself and Richard raise her children.

Peter decided to do this properly.

"In another few years, son, I hope that you will be able to. We'll talk about this again then, right?"

Mykie's light blue eyes swung over, and his little mouth was just barely agape. In his language over the last three years since Belinda introduced him to her son—Peter hadn't been all that surprised, after all he had concealed his relationship with Richard for about the same amount of time so he knew it was possible—Peter had been careful to never get too friendly with how he treated Mykie. But, if Belinda was going to rope him into this despite his rekindled relationship with the man of his dreams, he was going to do it right.

He was also going to get a good few secret agents out of it too.

"Is this one of those things I can't tell Mummy?"

"It would probably be a lot less awkward next week if you refrained, yes."

"I like Mr. Litton…Da." the name hung in the air strangely, unused and uncertain. Peter put his arm around Mykie's round little waist and they watched Richard play with Sher's fingers for a while. Despite Sher being a constant reminder of their previous pain, the fact that the boy was Peter's flesh and blood had bonded him to Richard closer than Peter ever could have hoped for.

"I do too My—son." They would figure out this charade if it killed them. But they would succeed, he could tell already from the triumphant little twitch of Mykie's lips. The same twitch was probably on his own face as well, but it was too small for him to quite tell.

* * *

Review?


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock as a toddler, with George Smiley as his grandfather. I can see the adorable, can't you? Also there are a few bits of French, which I think you can understand through context but if you can't they are also translated below. Thank you to **alexiel2001** and **proof-that-sherlock-has-a-heart** for the lovely French translations that you both volunteered after I sent out a rather desperate "HALP" on tumblr. You two saved my life with this.

Enjoy!

* * *

Sher was toddling happily around the large flat in Chelsea, following a "treasure trail" left for him by _grand-père_, while Peter gnawed on his thumbnail—watching George have a friendly talk with Mykie. The ten year old boy's eyes were solemn and attentive, but Peter could tell that half of him was cocked to pay attention to Sher's happy giggles. Belinda had wandered off to Scotland for the summer, leaving Sher and Mykie in Peter's care—it was only right, everyone nodded to themselves at the Circus, that since he'd knocked her up he look after her children. He was now avoided by most of the women down in Registry _and _in Archives which was a great treat and relief. He was _That awful Guillam man. Nice enough, takes care of that kid he left Miss Holmes with. Won't marry her though, the git—don't let him smooth talk you Renee_. That, and still no one knew about Richard, save for Smiley and Mykie.

And Sher, but no one listened to a little three year old boy—who, in some bizarre twist of fate really _was_ Peter's child. The baby photos which Peter's mother kept on her mantelpiece bore it out—her boy, her stupid, stupid, queer French boy given to her by her stupid French husband, and her adorable little grandson. Spitting images of one another save the color of their hair.

Peter had to make sure that the two boys would look out for one another, and if he was lucky then they'd look out for Queen and Country as well.

"_Père_!" The cover he used with Sher was that he was French—it easily explained his sometimes long absences, even when the boys stayed with himself and Richard or with George and Ann. Peter's French had gotten a great deal better in the last three years, as he mostly spoke it to Sher to cement the identity in the child's mind. Mykie knew, of course, but played along. The boy's French was a treasure to hear, and it thrilled Richard at home. Richard, stuck teaching German when his passion and talent was in French.

"Nous sommes bien ici, Peter." George was atrocious at the language, but he was as game as Mykie to Peter's deception. He also pushed Peter into being fatherly in situations where he felt out of his depth and childish more than anything—he wasn't ever _supposed_ to be a father. It wasn't one of the things he would have ever been allowed to have, given his _proclivities_. George was good enough to step in and play grandfather as well as coach Peter through this.

Sher had reached the end of George's puzzle game and was triumphantly scrambling his way down the stairs, his prize held aloft. A stuffed bear with an eyepatch—a toy which Belinda had scorned last Christmas, and Peter had been too self-conscious to purchase, and something which Sher had yearned for with all of his tiny being since the moment he'd seen it. George Smiley knew everything. Everything.

Peter smiled a little, kneeling down and letting the toddler jump into his arms and listening to his excited babbling—Belinda wouldn't take the bear away, not when she knew George Smiley had given it to her little boy. Peter would never take something from Sher, not on purpose at least.

"As-tu triché?_"_ Mykie was always looking for the simplest solutions to things, which meant it was damned hard to keep him from cheating at games. If Peter and George could work that out of him, or help him to train it right, he would make a magnificent agent runner someday—George sometimes mentioned that he saw a lot of the old Control in Mykie, that perhaps in thirty or forty years they would have another to rival the Control who had guided the Service for three decades.

"_Non, non, Père, non!"_ Sher was another matter. He was just barely three and could hardly be induced to cheat at anything—his big blue eyes would stare Peter down every time he searched Belinda's flat for taps or listening devices. She was a flighty woman, a mediocre parent, and Peter was glad to have shed most of her away—but he owed it to the boy he'd left her with, and the boy she already had, to keep her safe. Something, though, about the two of their personalities had formed a tiny core of steel in Sher.

His boy was as honest as the London rain.

"Ceci, is this what Grand-père gave you? Est-ce que tu aimes?"

"Si, Père, si!" Peter couldn't help but smile at Sher's enthusiasm. Of course Sher liked it, George had gotten it specifically for him because the old man had _known_ Sher would like it.

"Bien."

* * *

French translations if you couldn't get them through context:

Grand-pere: Grandfather

Pere: Father

Nous sommes bien ici: We're fine here

As-tu triché?: did you cheat?

Non: no

Ceci: this

Est-ce que tu aimes? : Do you like it?

Si: yes

Bien: Good

* * *

Thank you SO SO SO SO much **proof-that-sherlock-has-a-heart** and **alexiel2001** over on tumblr for the help with the French translations!

* * *

Review?


	3. Chapter 3

More bits of French in this, but they will be decreasing rapidly in the story.

Translations:

je deteste ca, je le deteste: I hate this, I hate it.

Je sais, fiston, je suis desole: I know, son, I'm sorry.

Et si, Qu'est-ce que tu en penses: Maybe if, what do you think?

Il ne nous aime plus désormais: doesn't he love us anymore?

Enjoy!

* * *

When Sher started school, he had to enroll in proper English classes—Peter nearly always spoke to him in French, as did Richard. The only English he heard was out of Mykie once in a while, and from Belinda. The five year old had loathed the whole experience. Peter had to feign more than a bit of ignorance with the language, instead sending Sher to Richard or to George. It was delightfully odd—Peter spoke with his normal, regular English whenever Sher was absent, or when he was at work, but at home he was a French ex-pat. Basically he had assumed the identity of his father, whose English was in delicate health for most of his life and who preferred French to anything else.

"Père, I hate this— je déteste ça, je le déteste_!" _Sher's round cheeks were puffy and red from crying, his eyes in a similar state, and his lips were pouting out. If he'd been able to bear the responsibilities, Peter might have asked for a foreign assignment—taken Richard and the boys to France for a few years—just so Sher might be able to attend school in the language he'd been raised with. But it wasn't feasible, France had gone over to the Communists that year and there was no way that Peter would take his family to live there _on purpose_. He felt terrible for poor Sher, stuck with his awful English grammar lessons, but there wasn't anything to be done.

"Je sais—I know, fiston, I know. Je— je suis désolé."

He petted at Sher's curls, hugging the snuffling little boy tightly.

"Et si…what if I learned with you? Qu'est-ce que tu en penses?" Sher tugged back at him to let him see the blinding smile on his tiny face, and for the first time in five years Peter felt that he wasn't playing a part to the little boy who knew him as his father. He felt just a bit worthy to claim the title.

Over the next several months—and what would be a few years, the teachers told him in sentences with small words—he and Sher painstakingly worked on their English. Mykie hovered over them, and corrected Sher with a speed and accuracy which was uncanny. George Smiley showed through with every execution of the pre-teen's decisions. Not only did George Smiley always _know_, he was also almost always _right_. He had been the one to suggest a public school—to board rather than go as a day-scholar.

So Mykie had gone off to boarding school—under the assumed name of Michael Westerby. The particular school was one which George had insisted on. Peter himself would have insisted on it as well as it was the one he'd gone to—but the choice did reveal just where George poached such excellent personnel all these years. People didn't much talk about what school they'd been to, and kept it quiet if they'd gone to a public one.

George was, Peter knew with relief, eagerly training Mykie to join the Service when the time was right and the boy was ready. These days he was nearly Sher and Mykie's only caregiver—Belinda had even made him their legal guardian. She breezed into their lives occasionally, bearing gifts and criticism for both boys. Mykie was too round in the middle—whatever her faults were, Ann Smiley was a delightful cook—and Sher needed to wear a shirt that buttoned properly. Peter was still quite too gay, and Richard was too good at returning her strained smiles with ones of his own.

It was only when something would go against "the good of everyone" that Belinda even saw fit to put ideas into either child's head. George hadn't allowed her back into the Service—a nice, quiet sum kept her nice and quiet and allowed her to travel as she wished for the most part. Mykie took some of Belinda's rather bizarre ideas and asked George about them. Sher started to share—over-share, really, until his small toy collection was reduced to the stuffed bear with the pirate eyepatch. He didn't quite understand that that wasn't what his awful mother had meant by the "good of everyone," but it was encouraging to see him sharing so Peter was at a loss.

"Pére, why does Mykie not live with us anymore? How come he spends so much time with Grand-Pére, il ne nous aime plus désormais?"

_Doesn't he love us anymore?_

Peter reassured Sher that night, but he wasn't quite so sure of what he was reassuring the boy _for_. Because at the end of the day, once he finished raising Sher and Mykie, he was fairly sure that it would be _Sher_ who hated them—Peter, George, Mykie—rather than any other way around. Time would tell, though. Time would tell.

* * *

Thank you SO SO SO SO much **proof-that-sherlock-has-a-heart** and **alexiel2001** over on tumblr for the help with the French translations!

* * *

Review?


	4. Chapter 4

I know I'm mostly writing and publishing this for myself since it has gotten relatively little response, but it is fun so I shall continue to write it :)

Translation:

Finis ta bouche, après tu pourras parler: finish your bite, then speak.

Enjoy!

* * *

"Pére, I'd like to go by Sherlock. If that's alright with the two of you and Mummy." Peter and Richard startled at the table, not having heard Sher—Sher_lock_—come down to breakfast. He'd gone up to his room in a fury the night before, about something he wouldn't speak of. Richard thought it was about a girl, Peter suspected it had something to do with that awful drowning.

Richard was the first to recover his wits, but then again he always was where Sher was concerned.

"Of course, of course. Though Heaven knows when your dear mother will come back from Argentina."

Sher_'s_ face split into a painful little grin as he sat down and filched some food from Peter's plate. Peter and Sher_lock_ knew that Belinda wasn't coming back from Argentina—this week's pretend destination, though Richard was none the wiser—any sooner than she was coming back from the grave she'd put herself in two years ago. _Mummy_ was their code-word for George and the Circus. Sher—Sherlock had come up with it after a lot of thought. George had been a far better mothering figure to Sh—Sherlock than anyone else had.

Neither George nor Peter faulted the boy for the assessment—George was the one who'd made Sher's birthday cake for the last three years, something Peter could only remember his own mother doing for him.

Watching the skinny boy across the table from him, Peter wondered what he would think of George's new scheme. They'd recently ended yet another Bond project—though Williams was making noises of reviving it in a few years—and George had come to him with an old notebook just a week ago. They'd had a long conversation in Arabic—the language nearly dead to Peter and quite broken from George's mouth but at the very least confidential in a home where they spoke French more often than English—about the contents of said notebook. It was an old manual, written in George's hand, marked with the Scalp-Hunter division stamps. It was called _Tiny Tim_.

Peter had vaguely heard of it once or twice in his early days with the Service, when the Circus still felt new and dangerous to him—before it was just his job.

Tiny Tim was in effect a branch-out of the Bond program. Train a secret agent—the perfect secret agent—but send them not to foreign climes but keep them at home. To _test the fences_, as George put it. Someone able to effortlessly gain access to the very highest echelons of power and secrecy—all while doing it in service to the Crown. They were to break into various locations—The Circus, secret testing sites, the Palace, among other places—to test how long it took to get in and out. To see if anyone noticed. It would require an incredibly loyal operative to not utterly abuse the knowledge and power required of them.

The project had been scrapped in 1962, George having decided that the _kind_ of agent he needed was one he'd seen grow up from earliest infancy. A mind which could hide no secrets from him, a mind which he trusted far more implicitly than he trusted taking the next breath. Once, he'd said with a gruff chuckle, he'd thought to revive it and use Peter but that he couldn't quite make himself do it. Perhaps, he'd continued, he'd been really waiting for Peter's _son_.

S—Sherlock was that puzzle-solver. Sherlock would be, for a time, their Tiny Tim. The project was named after the Dickens character—the character whose very existence saves the soul of Scrooge, the livelihood of Cratchit, and his own life. George had never been very good with naming his projects, but Peter understood the motivation.

"Pére I was wondering if later today you might take me down to the police station—or to Scotland Yard, even. Please? S'il te plait_?_" Peter smiled a little and nodded. He always caved when the boy brought out his French—though last year Sherlock had _scowled_ so _very_ fiercely when he'd figured out that his dear Pére wasn't actually French. The fact that he hadn't minded too much was another point in George's favor that Sherlock might grow up into just the agent they needed.

"Why do you need to go there?" Richard was always too curious, and always forgot Sherlock's sometimes massive inability to communicate in English—he still thought entirely in French, Peter believed. Sherlock rolled his eyes, muttering "_Shoes_," as he stuffed his mouth full of toast. Richard looked askance at the boy—he had been the one to ensure all of them had manners around the house, but with Sherlock he seemed to have failed miserably.

"Your mouth was full, couldn't understand your toast-mumble. Finis ta bouche, après tu pourras parler." Sherlock glared and started chewing with his mouth open—wide and comical chomps, his mouth an awful cement mixer of black bread and white butter—before he finally swallowed in such an exaggerated manner that Peter had a passing thought that the boy might have choked himself by accident.

"Shoes!"

George's plan might work, Peter remembered as he watched Sherlock dash up the stairs to get his things.

But it also might blow up in their faces because of the very person they needed to make it succeed. Sherlock Holmes would be the one to really decide it, they both knew. Peter quickly finished his own breakfast, pecked a kiss to Richard's cheek and then went to find his jacket and coat. Sherlock would be ready within moments, demanding to go—the twelve year old was unrelenting when he got like this. He'd found a puzzle, and he was bent on solving it. _Tiny Tim_ was at least that lucky with Sherlock.

* * *

Thank you SO SO SO SO much **proof-that-sherlock-has-a-heart** and **alexiel2001** over on tumblr for the help with the French translations!

* * *

Review?


	5. Chapter 5

So, thank you for the reviews so far and some of them have had me blushing to beat the band! Or something like that. I love them anyway, so there is that!

Sorry for the space between updates, real life kicked me in the shins and ran off laughing and I'm still picking myself back up. Also I realized I had to write this particular scene, which I'd somehow skipped when I sat down with the initial first draft. I'm not sure I like it, but it is necessary so there you go. This chapter is mostly about Peter's misgivings about just everything, his past regrets and his future frets.

Oh yes that happened.

Thanks again for the reviews!

Enjoy!

* * *

They couldn't tell sixteen year old Sherlock certain things about what they were training him for. He knew that what he was doing was classified, and that it wasn't a job that just anyone was picked for. George wanted Sherlock to fly as blind as possible into as many situations as possible—once a puzzle was displayed completed, there was little point in _doing_ it really. He never repeated the same puzzle games or codes with Sherlock, _ever_. Peter was torn between awe and a little fear of his son and his mentor—George was definitely beginning to get old, nearing seventy actually, but his mind was still viciously sharp. That mind was honing Sherlock's intelligence to the same level of acute awareness, and that was the crux of Peter's unease.

He usually sat a little bit away as George went over the seven different base-schedules of security operations, as well as how to predict permutations between them, with Sherlock. Peter made sure to always thieve his own ashtray from the kitchen—Ann was just as much a smoker as George, and kept one next to the sink—and chainsmoked his way through these little training meetings. Richard refused to kiss him when he came home like this, but listening to George's soft voice detail how to predict security personnel's reactions to how to get out of handcuffs brought up bad memories.

He remembered, as he put his lips to each cigarette, Sal's face as she tried to flirt with him and the evasive answer he'd given to her. He remembered, drawing in the zing of nicotine with the smoke, how Alwyn had nearly given him a heart-attack even though it was all part of the plan. Peter remembered, jiggling his leg a little as he exhaled, the most frightening moments of his life as he tucked away classified information—what amounted to state secrets—and then the agonizing request from that man named Esterhase to go to the top floor.

Most of all he remembered the fact that _George knew how to spy on his own intelligence service in a way which was nearly undetectable._ And in the damn seventies, too. But his terror wasn't all that these meetings brought up—he had almost failed George that day, save for Belinda Holmes. She had remembered his bag for him just before he'd left the building for the day.

His genuine relief at her had apparently endeared him to her for a while—he was one of the few men who didn't harass her for being pretty and new with the Circus. Back then Peter had stuck to simple and easily dismissed flirtations around work or around co-workers. That day had been almost twenty years ago, and yet every moment of it was still vivid in Peter's mind and he was forced to relive it at least once a week.

He was lucky it was that infrequent, too. He reluctantly listened in on how to break into anywhere, using anything and anyone. George was merciless, always had been and always would be—though his favorite weapons would always be carefully laid plans and bravado. It was the one thing that Peter had always trusted about his mentor—that George's mercy was given when the man was paid what he asked for in full.

"Look at those around you, and assess what advantages they might offer. A Bond looks to the women around him, to give him a bit of comfort and for information gathering. You, however, must act on the fly with everyone you meet. Make your conversation with the soldier who hesitates, and make your case to him—don't go for the one in the smartest uniform or anything like that. Avoid involving women at all costs—if you were cut out to be a Bond, Sherlock Holmes, you would be one. And remember to never remember things that have no value, but always remember to see everything so you can look at it later."

It was terrifying that the kinds of things that Peter had once done for George were going to be at the merciless fingertips of a sixteen year old boy. One who regarded George as a grandfather and loved him dearly, yes, but at the end of the day Sherlock was sixteen and in some ways still a child. And here was George, giving him the keys to the kingdom.

Sherlock's first mission, breaking into the palace by breaking exactly nothing, went off without a hitch. A few smiles here and there, and he was effortlessly gliding through the halls and examining the paintings. The queen and her family were away, of course, but that was no reason the security should be found lacking—though not under George or Peter's jurisdiction, George had enough contacts in various places that he had soon followed up with those responsible for being taken in by Sherlock's easily falsified smile.

He had been just shy of eighteen when he did it, too.

* * *

Review?


End file.
